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What do I mean by loving ourselves properly? I mean first of all, desiring to live, accepting life as a very great gift and a great good, not because of what it gives us, but because of what it enables us to give to others.

Thomas Merton

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Thomas Merton
Age: 53 †
Born: 1915
Born: January 15
Died: 1968
Died: December 10
Autobiographer
Catholic Priest
Essayist
Journalist
Peace Activist
Poet
Theologian
Trappist Cistercian Monk
Writer
Thomas Feverel Merton
Father Louis
First
Loving
Giving
Gift
Mean
Accepting
Great
Gives
Good
Others
Life
Give
Desiring
Live
Enables
Firsts
Properly

More quotes by Thomas Merton

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If we examine ourselves carefully we shall see most of us have an enormous amount of unfinished business...We have to be free so that we can just step across the line and that's it. That is what real freedom is.
Thomas Merton
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We love the things we pretend to laugh at.
Thomas Merton
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Why do we have to spend our lives striving to be something that we would never want to be, if we only knew what we wanted? Why do we waste our time doing things which... are just the opposite of what we were made for?
Thomas Merton
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Jesus lived and died in vain if He did not teach us to regulate the whole of life by the eternal law of love. Gandhi, quoted in Merton, p. 38
Thomas Merton
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Love is free it does not depend on the desirability of its object, but loves for love's sake.
Thomas Merton
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The geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out an inner journey. The inner journey is the interpolation of the meanings and signs of the outer pilgrimage. One can have one without the other. It is best to have both.
Thomas Merton
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The degradation of the sense of symbol in modern society is one of its many signs of spiritual decay.
Thomas Merton
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The whole purpose of spiritual direction is to penetrate beneath the surface of a man's life, to get behind the façade of conventional gestures and attitudes which he presents to the world, and to bring out his inner spiritual freedom, his inmost truth, which is what we call the likeness of Christ in his soul.
Thomas Merton
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It is in deep solitude and silence that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brother and sister.
Thomas Merton
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If Zen has any preference it is for glass that is plain, has no color, and is just glass.
Thomas Merton
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I can only become perfectly free by serving the will of God.
Thomas Merton
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We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life, and that is why we are travelling and in darkness. But we already possess Him by grace, and therefore in that sense we have arrived and are dwelling in the light. But oh! How far have I to go to find You in Whom I have already arrived!
Thomas Merton
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If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.
Thomas Merton
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Persons are not known by intellect alone, not by principles alone, but only by love. It is when we love the other, the enemy, that we obtain from God the key to an understanding of who he is, and who we are. It is only this realization that can open to us the real nature of our duty, and of right action.
Thomas Merton
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When you expect the world to end at any moment, you know there is no need to hurry. You take your time, you do your work well.
Thomas Merton
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Christ is born to us today, in order that he may appear to the whole world through us.
Thomas Merton
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Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.
Thomas Merton
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To desire Him to be merciful to us is to acknowledge Him as God. To seek His pity when we deserve no pity is to ask Him to be just with a justice so holy that it knows no evil and shows mercy to everyone who does not fly from Him in despair.
Thomas Merton
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Our knowledge of God is perfected by gratiitude: we are thankful and rejoice in the experience of the truth that He is love.
Thomas Merton
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From the moment you put a piece of bread in your mouth you are part of the world. Who grew the wheat? Who made the bread? Where did it come from? You are in relationship with all who brought it to the table. We are least separate and most in common when we eat and drink.
Thomas Merton